Principal

Chad Ratliff is the founding principal of Community Lab School—a nationally recognized, district-backed charter lab school in Albemarle County Public Schools—and a Lecturer at the University of Virginia. Chad led the formation of CLS through the merger and transformation of two underperforming schools into an innovative, research-aligned model emphasizing interdisciplinary, project-based, and mastery learning. During his tenure, Community Lab School earned Virginia’s highest educational honor—the Board of Education’s Highest Achievement Exemplar Award—for two consecutive years, was cited by UVA and MIT researchers for aligning instruction with adolescent developmental science, and has been featured in national publications such as Education Week and PBS NewsHour. His previous K-12 experience includes district leadership roles as well as work as a classroom teacher and coach.

Beyond K-12, Chad teaches undergraduate courses on educational innovation and social entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia. He has also taught entrepreneurship at Piedmont Virginia Community College, organized multiple Startup Weekend events in Charlottesville, and has founded and supported private sector ventures with a social impact component. His work at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship has led to state-level appointments, including roles on the Governor's Council for Youth Entrepreneurship and the Virginia Board of Education's Advisory Committee for Career and Technical Education. Additionally, he was an invited keynote speaker at the National Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education annual conference and served on various boards, including the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council, the Edgar and Eleanor Shannon Foundation for Excellence in Education, and Virginia Career Education Foundation. 

Chad’s expertise has been recognized both nationally and internationally. He was named one of the 20 to Watch educational leaders in the country by the National School Boards Association, was invited to several White House education innovation events, called to testify before the Virginia General Assembly, and has spoken at major organizations such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the American Association of School Superintendents. The Singapore Ministry of Education invited him to share insights on school innovation and he served as the opening keynote speaker at James Madison University’s Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference for faculty.

Chad co-authored Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools and wrote the foreword for "On Liberating Teachers" in Teacher Burnout Turnaround: Strategies for Empowered Educators by Tish Jennings. He has also written multiple articles and presented widely for practitioner audiences.

Currently a doctoral student at the University of Virginia, his research ties together his life’s work at the intersection of K-12 education, innovation, and entrepreneurship by examining educational leadership through the lens of entrepreneurial thinking—specifically, effectuation—to better understand how school leaders design, launch, and sustain innovative educational models within traditional public school constraints. Chad holds an M.Ed. from UVA, an MBA from Virginia Tech, and a B.S. from Old Dominion University. He also completed leadership training at the UVA Darden School of Business’ Executive Educators Leadership Institute.